~~Day 113~~

~~David~~

The fire sky burned above, and the group walked the shallow hills of the Red Pits. But, time for a quick break, first.

"Pegasus."

The goort looked up at him and tilted his head.

Nodding, David patted the red and black unicorn with spikes and wings. "Pegasus. Your name is Pegasus. Pegasus."

Pegasus jumped, but only his front half. A half-rear. He made another one of those strange, horse-whinny, growly sounds. It didn't sound like a typical happy animal, but that's exactly how he behaved: happy, coming in closer to David and pushing his shoulder into David's hip. His ears were subtle things, more like a lizard's ears, snug under horns near the eye ridges, so David couldn't try to read those. But the horse closed his eyes as he pressed against David's side, and he was sure that was pretty damn universal body language.

Had the wurm in the vision been that girl's pet? She'd looked down at it, crying, before the rider killed her. Her pet. Her companion, like Pegasus was his now.

David clenched his fist, ground his teeth, closed his eyes, and did his best to suppress his aura. He failed. Bits of fire crept out through the cracks in his mind, seeped into his limbs and into the world. Pegasus took a step back from him, but David didn't watch, eyes still closed, picturing the way the girl's hands had looked, the only things he'd been able to see through her eyes. Shaking. Trembling. Terrified. Traumatized. Sad.

The rider. The fucking rider. He'd killed her in cold blood. Executed her. Killed her companion. Butchered her.

He clenched his fists harder until pain worked up his knuckles into his forearms, and his arms shook. The ground stirred around him, his aura playing a song a little too loud, too direct, too harsh, and tiny spikes of blackstone pushed up from the red and brown dirt. He didn't need to look to know they were there, his sixth sense painting a blurry picture of the world around him.

The memory burned his brain, scalded his soul, and no matter how hard he fought to push it down, it came back up and punched through years and years of practice suppressing his emotions. They hadn't been his emotions. For a fleeting second, he'd been someone else, and for that single moment, the sensation had been so strong it'd crossed the goddamn fucking universe so he could taste it.

"David." Someone's voice. A woman's voice. "David!"

He opened his eyes and stared into Caera's eye. She stared at him from only inches away, her hands on his shoulders so she towered over him. Hands on his shoulders? He hadn't felt that, lost in his own world.

"I'm okay," he said. "I'm okay, I--"

Around him, was everyone. They circled him, some with their weapons drawn, large black weapons, axes and swords, banged-up metal held together like pieces of scrap from a junkyard. Some were snarling, some grimacing, but not at him. They were caught up in the aura, ready to fight, ready to kill, ready to unleash their--unleash his anger on whoever needed to die. Even Pegasus looked ready to fight, stomping the ground with a hoof.

A hundred one-foot-tall spikes of black stuck up from the ground, circling David in a chaotic mass. Caera stood between them, grip solid on his shoulder, eye locked on him.

He took a deep breath and squashed the aura.

"Sorry," he said, and he turned and looked at everyone. "Sorry, really. I just... yeah."

"Sure you're okay?" Caera asked, and she nudged her nose into his cheek. "You almost had us all going to war against... no one."

He nodded and peeked behind him. With a heavy gulp, the betrayers peeked out from behind their succubi and incubi, and even Tacharius kept his distance. Tatiana did not. She approached, stood outside the ring of spikes, and stared at him, eyebrow raised.

"I can see why the demons talk about you in hushed whispers," she said. "Even before I met you, word of your power spread."

He shrugged. "Talk like that will go straight to my head."

Maybe she thought he was dismissing her, because she gestured at the ground, and then at everyone around them.

"Caera is right. You had us all ready to do battle, trapped in your aura. We were completely enthralled."

"Sorry, sorry. I'll make sure it doesn't happen again."

Past Caera, Laoko watched him, both sets of arms folded across her chest. Moriah stood with her, a scrutinizing gaze aimed at him.

Daoka clicked at him, rubbing Pegasus's back, the horse at her side.

"Yeah," Jeskura said. "She's right. I've never felt an aura like that from you, man."

"I was thinking about the girl the rider killed. It really got under my skin." He waved a hand down at the surrounding spikes, and they melted into the ground. Sighing, he squatted down and held out a hand to Pegasus. Did he burn that bridge?

Pegasus came up to him immediately and pawed at the ground with a hoof. Thank god. David hugged his horse around the neck, and Pegasus hooked his neck over David's shoulder.

"Is this going to be an issue?" Tatiana said. "Your great power is apparently at the mercy of your emotions."

"You try experiencing visions of people dying." Before she could retort, David held up a hand. "No use talking about it. We got a mission. How far until we reach the spire and Khazeer?"

"The Scar is only a few days behind us, so eleven days at least. Maybe more at this pace."

No need to say it. Everyone started walking.

He felt naked, out in the open like this. Death's Grip had tall mountains and tunnels. The Grave Valley had fog and buildings, mausoleums, and black forests. The Scar had its canyon and the two tall mountains running its length. But out in the Red Pits, it was mostly flat land and shallow hills too short to mean anything. If anything, there were no hills at all, but shallow dips in the ground, each a potential spot for a red pit to open up. No fog at all. No cover at all.

Sure enough, the inevitable happened. Demons. No angels, thank god, but while the Red Pits and Navameere fields were supposedly the only two provinces to force their demons into actual militaries, that didn't include every demon. Some demons roamed in large groups, raiders, warbands, looking for easy meals. A group of demons was heading their way, and judging from the look of them, a tetrad led them, followed by a bunch of vratorins and devorjins.

Vratorins, or vrats, were nearly eight feet tall, almost as big as Caera. Classic demons, walking on two clawed feet, with a tail and a couple big horns. Two arms, body spikes, and demony, skull-ish faces, usually with black tendril hair. They were the most common demon breed in all provinces, according to Laoko and Caera, except for the imps and grems. And these, several dozen at least, walked with bits of black meera metal strapped to their bodies, and swords or axes at the ready.

The devorjins, or brutes, had no weapons or armor. They didn't need them. They were almost as big as tetrads, nine-feet-tall juggernauts of muscle, also with skull-like faces, except far more so than the vrats, with tiny red eyes within large eye sockets. Their skin wasn't just dark red, but almost solid black, and their clawed hands and feet were thick and heavy. They had no body spikes or horns of any kind, leaving all their freaky muscle fully exposed.

There were some others in the group, too. A few gorgalas like Jes. A few riivas like Daoka, surprisingly; satyrs preferred mountainous provinces. They had a couple of tregeeras, tigers like Caera. And at the front walked a korgejin tetrad.

Of the four tetrad breeds, korgejins had been the most problematic so far. They had the same demony face of a vrat, except, predictably, even more scary, more skull-ish, and his lack of lips meant all his big teeth were fully exposed. He stood ten feet tall, decked out in a dozen pieces of bent meera metal, and walked on hooves. No tail, but he had giant wings, bigger and stronger than Acelina's, and he held an axe in hand, the same size as the one Acelina got from Caera's dead tetrad friend Renato, way back in Death's Grip. A lifetime ago.

Skulls. The demons were decorated with skulls, many attached to their armor by straps through the eye sockets and necks or carved holes. Some dangled from black metal chains, likely plucked from a Hell growth, or traded from the Scar and the vola -- succubi and incubi -- demons who'd crafted them, along with the leather straps.

"Tatiana?" David asked. "Know who that is?"

Laoko spoke first. "I do. That is Marcelo."

"Friend or foe?"

"I do not know. Last I heard, he was not happy with Khazeer. He was not a bailiff, thought he should be, and once challenged Khazeer to combat for the right. He lost, but barely, and Khazeer valued his prowess in combat. Het let Marcelo live."

David blinked up at the huge lady. "A demon let another demon live, just because he was almost good enough to kill him?"

"Yes. Khazeer -- indeed, all spire rulers -- are smarter than you believe, boy. They think ahead, unlike others. Khazeer used Marcelo for centuries, fighting against the Navameere Fields. But I was not around to see the fallout, working with Azailia to take the Scar."

"So Marcelo likes to try and take things he thinks he deserves?"

"Yes." Laoko nodded, withdrew her four short swords and gave each a spin in her hands, testing their balance. "Yes he does."

The closer Marcelo grew, the more demons came into focus. David had thought it less than a hundred before. It was looking like two hundred now, shoulders and horns no longer a blur at a distance. Wings, tails, a hundred weapons, all coming into focus.

David's group fell into form immediately. Laoko and Moriah stood directly in front of him. Caera and Jes stood beside him. Daoka stood directly behind him with Tsila. Acelina stood behind them with the four Las around her legs. Ideally, Acelina and the Las wouldn't get directly involved in the fight; not exactly suited for full-on battle. But it'd come to that before, and they drew their weapons, ready and waiting.

David set a hand on Pegasus and pushed him toward Daoka. With a quiet click down at the goort, she guided Pegasus back and set him on his way past Acelina toward the volas and betrayers in the back.

"Tatiana, keep an eye on Pegasus," he said.

"I--"

"Now!" David snapped his glare back at her, and the succubus shut up. She gulped, nodded, and guided the small horse away from David and his crew.

"Summon batlam?" Moriah asked. Weapons and armor would certainly help the angels. They'd help him, too. But they also made their merry little band more noticeable, especially to anyone flying overhead. Against a backdrop of black and red, white stood out like a beacon.

"Not yet. You can draw your armor and weapons pretty fast, right?"

"Almost instantly."

"Then keep it ready, but not yet."

Moriah nodded and stayed beside Laoko as they approached.

Less a warband and more like a small army. At least two hundred demons now, spreading out more and more as they approached.

"I will speak to him," Laoko said.

David raised an eyebrow. "You sure? I can put on a presentation, be intimidating and do the whole 'unmarked special journey blah blah' shtick?"

"I would prefer to speak with Marcelo before you inevitably trigger a battle."

"Me? You don't think you're more likely to do that? Remember what happened with Priscillian? The bailiff you callously murdered and--"

"I do believe that," she said, voice smooth, not taking his bait.

"Why?"

"Because Marcelo and I have history. I understand him. He understands me."

The way she said history put images in his head. Romance? Unlikely. Fuck buddies? Maybe.

"Alright."

She grinned down at him, stepped forward, and sure enough the army stopped twenty meters away, and Marcelo walked forward. Neither she nor he put their weapons away.

David scanned the crowd, and they scanned him in return. Slowly but surely, a whisper ran through the army, some demons stirring and shifting as they realized who--what David was. He stood his ground, Moriah directly in front of him. They looked at her and Tsila, too, and Acelina, of course; spire mothers -- zotivas -- never left their spires. But they always came back to him, eyes locked on his forehead, making sure there was no number underneath his shaggy red hair.

"Marcelo," Laoko said.

The korgejin grunted and thudded his breastplate with a fist, axe in hand. Laoko did the same with hers.

"Laoko," he said, voice full of gravel. "I thought you were in the Grave Valley."

"I was. I met this unmarked boy behind me, and since then, we have been on quite the journey."

The korgejin tilted his head and looked past Laoko, giant horns sticking out from his hairless skull.

"Two angels and a zotiva, as well. Quite an interesting crew."

"Indeed. It's been interesting times, for everyone. I assume you've heard of the alien invaders."

"I have. Creatures from outside the Great Tower."

Laoko nodded. "Seen them yet?"

"No."

"Pray you do not."

David smiled. Pray? Judging from Marcelo's reaction, a head tilt and sneer, the word choice was annoying and typical for Laoko. These two knew each other very well.

Look at him, reading people better than ever. Where was Mia so he could gloat?

"Then I have no choice," Marcelo continued, "but to believe these rumors are true? That there is an alien invader, some creature from the beyond, pushing its way into Hell? And that this unmarked boy is connected somehow?"

"Indeed," Laoko said. "We are on a journey to stop this madness before the Great Tower itself is destroyed. We--" She stopped, looked around at Marcelo's group, and slowly pointed all four of her swords out at them with spread arms. "Tell me, Marcelo. This group does not look like a regiment from Khazeer. I see a group of random demons in a random array of gear."

"We're not with Khazeer."

David clenched his teeth and waved back at the demons and people behind him, arm down. They stepped back.

"Then why are you here?" Laoko asked.

"I spotted white wings at a distance and came with intent to earn a meal." He licked his teeth, and let out a heavy, deep rumble. "It has been ages since I've tasted angel heart. The Spires War was so long ago."

Marcelo was old, Laoko old. Maybe older.

Moriah took a step forward, still in her potram rune, no armor or weapon out. Maybe she was trying to bait the demons into attacking her so she could summon her armaments and kill them in surprise. Good plan, if things had to get violent.

"We are trying to save everyone's lives," Moriah said, glaring. All David could see was the back of her head, but Moriah's glare knew no bounds. "Get out of our way, or escort us to Khazeer."

Marcelo shook his head. "No, I don't think I will." He took a step forward and chuckled.

David ran through a thousand scenarios in his head in moments. None of them ended well. Many ended with friends dying, or at least their lives being in danger. This encounter was going to go like so many others, demons who just didn't want to see past their stomachs or their egos. They wanted a fight. They wanted to eat Moriah and Tsila. And now that they knew he was unmarked, they wanted to eat him, too.

David summoned the batlam rune. His flimsy red, revealing toga, his black gladiator sandals, his bits of black jewelry, it all vanished in a glow of red light, and armor replaced it. A full suit of metal armor, a combination of heavy plate mail, but also something more artistic, less functional, more decorative. Spikes. Pauldrons. Red silk that dangled from the joints. And a black crown with red jewels on it and spikes that shot up the sides.

He stuck his hand out to the side and summoned his staff, a solid piece of black metal with claws at the top, encompassing a red jewel with amber flames swirling within. A battle wizard dressed in red and black.

Matching Marcelo's sneer, he pointed his staff at the korgejin tetrad. "Moriah, Laoko, step back."

For the first time yet, Marcelo raised an eyebrow in surprise as both Laoko and Moriah did as told.

"Unmarked," Marcelo said. "Just like the one from Navameere. Come to slaughter us all?"

"I don't know why the other unmarked is fighting you," he said. "I'll kill her if it comes to that. Do I have to kill you too?" He already knew the answer.

"I heard," the demon said, "that the other unmarked has been hesitant to use her powers. Her forward push into the Red Pits has slowed because of it. I wonder why. And I wonder if you have the same limitation?"

David reached deep into himself, found the strings, and played music. Marcelo had a point. If David played the music too loud, Hell would join in, pull him into her currents, and some primitive part of his mind would get swept along in the song. The song would be massive, grand, a symphony of power, and the aliens would hear it. The invader would focus in on his position, attack, and if the alien army was as big as last time, his girls wouldn't be able to stop them, and he'd be blocked from playing another note, silenced the by invader's strange presence.

But he didn't need to play loud to make a statement.

He summoned three black spikes, each ten feet tall, and each straight up from under the legs of two vrats, and one brute. Blackstone, the hardest 'natural' mineral in Hell's crust. Hard enough to pierce even brute flesh. The three demons opened their eyes wide as a slab of metal six inches thick shot up through their guts and into their throats, from crotch to brain. They died in seconds, and their bodies slowly slid down the black spikes, dragging blood along the blackstone where the spikes stuck up through the tops of their skulls.

Marcelo jumped back. Moriah stared over her shoulder at David. He didn't look. Striking first like this twisted his stomach until his insides burned. It had to be done. It still fucking hurt.

"I'll kill every last one of you," David said. "I just came back from conquering the Scar. Tarkissa is dead, and the new spire ruler serves me. I have two angels with me, a bolstara tetrad, and the rest of the girls are all battle-hardened, Marcelo. Get the fuck out of my way or I will skewer you all and take your skulls."

He was so fucking tired of this shit. Every time he thought maybe things wouldn't go this way, the demons played their hand and made violence inevitable. At least, maybe this way, he could stop the battle from escalating.

Time for the response. Marcelo would back off or commit.

With a heavy growl, Marcelo held out his hand to his army, palm back, and gestured them to step away. They did, all of them baring their teeth, all of them looking for a fight.

"So it is real," Marcelo said. "Your... power. You can manipulate Hell. But I had heard--"

"You don't know the details." David stepped up, replacing Laoko at the head of the group, and she and Moriah stood at his sides. "And I have no intention of explaining them to you. You wander over here, uninvited, get in my way, and get ready for a fight? I have walked here from Death's Grip and I have been baptized in fire. I've had to fight off spire rulers, the rider, a battalion of angels, an army of aliens, a fucking reaper, and had a face-to-face with Old Ones!" Every demon stared at him, wide-eyed. "I have no fucking patience left to deal with worms like you. Get. The fuck. Out of my way!"

Baptized in fire? In any other world, talking like that would have sounded beyond dumb. In Hell, after all the shit he'd been through, it fit.

Marcelo stood there, glaring, thinking. Thinking was good. Thinking was a big step up from many of the demons David had dealt with. No wonder he was acquaintances with Laoko.

Marcelo hooked his axe on his hip. His army swallowed down their energy and rage, bloodlust bubbling in their limbs, tails fidgeting and claws squeezing the air in frustration.

"You've... talked with Old Ones?" Marcelo asked.

Finally. David took a deep breath, nodded, and held his staff at his side more like a walking stick instead of a tool of war.

"I have. Maybe I'll tell you more someday, but not today. Today, you are going to leave us be."

Marcelo nodded, stood up straight, and hooked his wings to his back like a cape.

"I suppose I should not be surprised," he said. "I spotted angels and came here expecting a fight. I did not expect to meet one of the unmarked. You say you don't know why the other unmarked from the Navameere Fields is attacking the Red Pits?"

"I don't know why. If I had to guess, it's because she's a fucking sack of shit. I've dealt with another unmarked who was trash. He'd recruited Cainites and started his own little cult and everything."

Marcelo laughed. "Oh? And how did you kill him?"

"Smashed his head in with a rock with my hands."

Marcelo laughed again, louder, and unless David was going insane, that was a happy laugh.

"How many unmarked are there in Hell?" he asked.

"You know I'm not telling you that."

"Where is your goal taking you?"

David shook his head. "Not telling you that, either."

Despite getting shot down and shut out, Marcelo just smiled. "Khazeer won't let you simply walk through the Red Pits uncontested," he said. "I cannot stop you, but my band of demons is small. His is not."

"We're not going to just slip on by. We're going to meet with Khazeer."

Marcelo shook his head. "Khazeer won't just--"

"I'm here," Tatiana said, stepping up. Not quite up, but close enough, speaking over David's shoulder. "I'll deal with Khazeer."

With another hearty chuckle, Marcelo licked his teeth, eyes on the tall, lean succubus. "Of course. Tatiana." From the way his eyes roamed her body and her flimsy red silks, he knew her well. "This unmarked convinced you to leave the Scar?"

"I didn't have much of a choice. The new spire ruler, Septima, sent me on this trip, as proof of David's"--she gestured to him--"good will."

"Khazeer will be happy to see you."

"I'm sure he will."

"I think," Laoko said. "Perhaps we can assume a... cessation of hostilities?" David blinked up at her, and she returned it with a playful little grin. "We'll be on our way."

This whole situation felt familiar. In the Grave Valley, when running from the rider, he'd randomly run into Laoko and her fellow tetrad, her friend Teleius, and their warband. Were tetrads just out here, randomly exploring province borders? It made sense, he supposed. Demons crossing borders from province to province were probably either easy pickings, or important, and good targets for powerful demons like tetrads and the little armies they always seemed to have.

"And us?" Marcelo asked.

"Stay here," David said. "Do whatever it is you were doing before, just leave us out of it. Though, if you were planning on attacking the Scar, I suggest against it. They will eat you alive."

Marcelo raised a brow, but when not a single person in David's group laughed, he slowly nodded.

"Then well met, unmarked. You are no prey." Nodding, Marcelo backed off, and walked the other way. His nearest troops stripped the weapons and armor from their dead comrades, but left the corpses skewered on the spikes.

David watched them go, eyes peeled, waiting for them to turn around and charge him. They did not. After ten minutes, the small army was far enough for David to relax, and he melted the three black spikes back into the dirt. The Las jumped the bodies and harvested the hearts, ripping and tearing with glee.

"That went well," Laoko said.

"I... guess."

"In the Red Pits, demons respect power. Truly respect it. In many provinces, demons are little more than animals, bowing to or fleeing from stronger demons. But here in the Red Pits, there is a... hierarchy, beyond the simple one described to you. There are many groups, and they respect each other, as much as demons can respect. A ladder based on power. And individual demons have earned respect through their power, too, as Marcelo has. The only reason Khazeer has not sent a proper army to track him down and kill him for poaching from his army"--she gestured to the fleeing two hundred demons--"is the respect Marcelo has earned."

"That's different from other provinces?"

"Yes. The other provinces do not inherently respect power. They serve it, fear it, but respect it? No. A spire ruler like Azailia will kill a potential competitor. Khazeer, and Morgana of the Navameere Fields, would not, not unless it was a duel."

"Almost sounds like a kind of honor." Sighing, he dismissed his armor and staff, and rubbed his knuckles, trying to suppress the nausea callous murder set in his gut.

"Yes, I suppose so." Laoko squatted beside him and kissed his cheek. "Your decisiveness today was quite impressive."

He shot her a hard glare. She didn't react.

"I killed three demons before we'd even started the battle."

"Yes, you did, and prevented the battle entirely."

"Ever heard 'don't fire unless fired upon'?" he asked. She tilted her head. "It means don't attack first. You'd be amazed at how many lives can be saved when people stop assuming everyone is out to kill them. Peace can happen, you know."

She chuckled in that calm, demeaning kinda way she did, like a cheese grater to the balls. "Between demons looking to eat each other?"

He sighed again. "No, I suppose not."

"Then be proud your might and decisiveness saved many lives." Shrugging, she stood up, swords already sheathed, and she gestured out to the path ahead between the enormous pits in the ground. "Shall we go?"

"Yeah... Yeah, let's go."

They fell back into positions again. Back in his comfy potram rune, he looked at the ground as they walked, wincing. Doing things Laoko's way was a bitter pill.

Daoka came up behind him, set her hands on his shoulders, clicked thrice, and nudged her cheek against his. At least she understood.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~Day 107~~

~~Mia~~

A week later, they found a symbol. Someone had drawn on the floor. Hell didn't have pencils or pens, and what information demons bothered to write, they wrote with Estian runes--which they almost never bothered doing. Someone else had written something by bringing up rock through the floor, rock from beneath the archangel flesh, rock that pointed straight ahead as an arrow.

Mia smiled. "James is getting better with the music if he can make specific shapes like this," she said, gesturing at the two-foot-long arrow of stone sticking up through the rock-archangel flesh bloody carpet under their feet. He'd had to reach below the flesh, something he couldn't affect with the music, and spun a very specific tune to craft this shape.

"Why is he different from you?" Azreal asked. "Why is his skill not at your level, or above it, if he's been in Hell longer?"

"He was trapped in the Black Valley, tied up, and probably tortured and stuff. Zel back in Death's Grip encouraged me to explore my powers, in hopes I could break Vin, and maybe even help her at a larger scale." She shivered. Of all the people she'd killed, Zel had not only been the first, but was still the most gruesome. The feel of forcing a large spike -- Vin's horn -- through her eye socket and into her brain, was permanently etched in her mind. Almost like... like David must feel, after having caved in a man's skull with a rock. Was that his first kill? Judging from the rage in his eyes, and how he'd swung the rock down several times, probably not.

She missed her brother. That memory, of looking up and seeing her brother bash her brains in through some other unmarked's eyes, filled her stomach with cold bile. David usually put up a robotic front, acted like he was separate from the rest of the emotional, irrational world, but she knew him better than that. Hell, David knew himself better than that. He had to be hurting.

"That makes me wonder," Mia said. "I'm learning this weird power, right? I spend every day testing it." To prove it, she gestured around at the flesh tunnel they walked, the bloody walls, the hundreds of large, dead, half-closed eyes, and she played a little tune. A quiet, specific thing, like hitting a musical triangle. It was enough to summon a spike of blackstone up through the bloody floor at her feet, and with a small shift of the tune, crack it off so she could wield it like a club.

"That's not dangerous?" Julisa asked.

"Nope. I can tell when I'm playing too loudly. This was quiet. And the more I use the music, the better I get at making things happen with quieter music. It's like... like... I can't play the guitar, but I tried to learn, and learning how to press on the fret strings only as hard as you need to is tough. Or learning the piano, you know? It takes time to learn how hard to press the keys. The more I practice, the more I get a feel for it." She played another silent tune, summoned another little spike, broke it off, and rolled it onto the bloody floor. With a happy half-bark half-roar, Cerberus's dopey head picked it up in his maw, and he walked beside her, boss head scanning, serious head pointed straight ahead like a classic pointing dog.

"My point is," she said, "that James must be practicing like this, too. I bet Adron has been encouraging him."

"Livian likely is, too," Romakus said. "She'll want her new boy toy to be a valuable fighter and asset."

Livian was a bolstara tetrad, four arms, hooves, no tail or wings, with a slim build and short dreadlocks. Her, Romakus, and Julisa had made up the three tetrads of the Damall in Death's Grip. How long they had known each other, Mia couldn't quite figure out, but both Livian and Julisa seemed comfortable giving orders when Romakus wasn't.

"James is a good man," Azreal said.

Mia smiled back at the angel, but didn't ask. In typical boy fashion, Azreal had not bothered learning anything about James beyond that he was kind, quiet, and with a reserve of strength--whatever that meant. And that he was an orphan, like Mia and David were. Blood relative, maybe, which would make for an interesting family tree, since he was black and David and Mia were gingers.

The memory of Ramiel the angel putting a red amber egg into a man a century ago, on the surface, rippled in Mia's mind like someone had dropped a pebble in a scrying pool. Her ancestor? James's ancestor, too?

"How much longer to False Gate?" she asked, looking back at the angel. They all knew the answer.

"A week," he said without hesitation. That kind of irritated her. Azreal definitely wasn't the social type, but he also seemed impervious to losing his patience, despite her asking 'how long' many times now. Ask him again in five minutes? Maybe.

Vin and Kas took the lead this time, Vin finally able to walk directly on his ankle without a limp. Kas had long healed, Cerberus too, and Romakus and Julisa were as well. Despite his words to the contrary, Azreal was probably still wounded internally, but he didn't show it, walking upright and proud.

Mia trailed behind everyone until she fell in step with Azreal. "You were right about Noah. He took this path."

Azreal nodded.

"You really know him well," she said.

"We have worked together for many thousands of years." He marched along, purple eyes aimed straight ahead. Unlike her black gladiator sandals, his were brown, almost gold.

"Ever been reborn? Is... Is that okay to ask?"

"It is, and I have."

She smiled and nodded. "Did you two know each other, and then get reborn, and still know each other?"

"Yes, many times."

"Wow. That is a very old friendship."

The tiniest tug of muscle pulled at the corner of his mouth. "It is. It is why we were comfortable coming down here and looking for you. We confided in each other, and we both found the council of angels wanting."

Mia smiled, but it faded with a sigh. It hadn't been just Noah and Azreal that'd come looking for her. They'd brought several other angels, and they'd all died in the Black Valley. Some to invaders chasing Noah and Azreal down for the residual music they had on their bodies from meeting Mia, and some had died to Asmodeus, the Old One.

Noah and Azreal didn't talk about them, and Mia left it at that.

"I know you two have fought Vin before," she said. "And the rider."

"We have."

"Is it normal for angels to come to Hell randomly and pick fights?"

Azreal shook his head. "It has become a... thing, for angels to sometimes vow to stop the rider. No demon, not even Belor, has killed as many angels as he has. He is a blight and must be expunged."

Mia gulped. The rider had corrected Yosepha, when she'd accused him of killing thousands of angels. He'd said millions. A ridiculous number. Couldn't be true. Except... if Cain had been around since the dawn of human civilization, maybe since long before then, he might have been hundreds of thousands of years old. Maybe millions? She'd heard vague mentions of the Second War, Cain's War, having been fought around a hundred thousand years ago, but no one had exact dates for any of that shit. Either way, if Cain, and then the rider, had been causing chaos for millennia, yeah, over the years, killing a million angels might have been possible.

No wonder he was worried about the 'dread', being that old.

"That still seems weird to me," she said. "So the rider's just been drifting around, randomly showing up, disappearing, showing up, for super fucking long, and angels occasionally take him on?"

"He is... legend, Mia," Azreal said. "All of Heaven, every angel, despises him. When news stirs of his appearance, some angels hunt him down of their own will. They never return."

Vin chuckled, a deep, heavy rumble that vibrated the archangel blood around his feet. "Angels think the rider feasts on their hearts. That he hunts them for their resonance."

"Are you saying he does not?" the angel asked, glaring at Vin's back.

Vin shook his head. "I believe, when he was just a man, he fed on angel hearts and became strong. The strongest soul in Hell. But when we roamed Hell together, I did not see him feed."

Azreal blinked, confused.

Mia spoke up. "Can you fill us in on the timeline a bit, Vin?"

The titan shrugged. "If I was alive during Cain's War, I have forgotten. But..." He stopped walking, and the group stopped with him. "I remember... the Cainites. I remember the first words, the birth of that cult, convinced they could become like Cain if they ate angel hearts. I remember..." He looked back at Mia, red eyes drifting as he dove through hazy memories. "I remember... a man and a woman. Souls. Powerful. I remember the cult blossoming under them. A pair. Lovers."

"The beginning of Cain's War," Azreal said. "I have read about it only."

"You were there?" Mia jogged up to him and stared up at Vin. "That was a hundred thousand years ago!"

With a quiet growl, Vin looked down at the bloody floor of the tunnel, eyes staring off into nothing.

"I do not know how much I know is memory, or story learned. But it is said after Cain's War, after many angels died, he and Lilith disappeared. The rider appeared not long after, a man who was not a man. He was legend when I first met him. He respected my power, and my bloodlust. We hunted. We killed." Vinicius sighed, happily, and flexed the fingers of his four hands, the four arms bulging with shifting muscle. But then he let his arms go limp, and his tail too. "Much later, only a few centuries ago, when we met again, the rider's presence had changed. No longer bloodlust and a hunger for violence. Now he wanted..."

They knew what the rider wanted now. He wanted to bring everything to an end. He wanted the Great Tower to get swallowed up by the invader and be destroyed. Maybe it was the only way he could die, him and Lilith, by destroying everything.

The worst part was, Mia didn't entirely blame him. If Cain and Lilith had gone to the Forgotten Place after losing Cain's War, and somehow became immortal, that was... horrible. Immortality, true immortality, was a curse. If you lived a trillion years, no human mind could take that. It'd wear you down like water eventually rubbing a jagged rock smooth, and then down to nothing but dust. And what about when everyone was gone? What about in a trillion trillion years? What if, in the end, there was only you, in endless isolation for all eternity?

Mia shivered. If that was the fate Cain feared, she understood. But Lilith thought differently. She thought there was something to be had in the future. Did they make some kind of deal with Lucifer? So many questions, and all she could do was keep walking forward on the path Lilith had put her on.

Lilith wanted the future to live on, said so to her own husband, and she had a clue about what was happening. Between helping Cain or helping Lilith, the choice was clear.

"The rider," Vin said, "is... not a soul. Not anymore."

Azreal flapped his wings. "I must agree with Vinicius. Cain and Lilith both, are souls no longer. And I doubt they are demons or angels, either. They are something else."

Something else. Mia was pretty sure she was at least part human, but Lilith and Cain were literal skeletons inside armor, and they could swim around the fucking lava veins of Hell. They could summon wings of literal flames, but couldn't fly, only glide. They had auras that weren't like a demon's, or an angel's, or Mia's. So what were they?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~Day 112~~

~~Unknown~~

A woman stood her ground in a cave, a large snake-like creature at her side. The snake creature was dead, and the woman looked down at it with tears in her eyes, before a man in bronze, gold, and red armor, brought his axe down on her head.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~Day 113~~

~~Mia~~

Mia sat up with a gasp and clutched her skull. Oh my god oh my god oh my--

Cerberus hopped onto his four legs and spun around, snarling at everyone and everything with his three heads. He spread out his limbs, tail going rigid, and low to the ground, he roared.

"I'm fine! Cerb, I'm fine." Mia collapsed back against the cave wall and let her limbs go limp. Right, the cave, the cave she'd crafted last night for the group. They were getting closer to the edge of Angel's spine, and the tunnel was taking them higher and higher and higher. More angel flesh, less rock, making it harder to sculpt caves. But she'd managed.

Kas grunted and squatted beside her, resting much of his weight on his enormous palms.

"Mia?"

"I had a... vision. Another unmarked died," she said. Everyone looked her way, and she waved her hands. "Not David. A... a girl. A girl with tan skin, and a... pet wurm I think. The rider killed her. And the wurm."

Sighing, she held out her arms to Cerberus, and the giant dog came up to her and sat in front of her. She hugged him, and like a rock, he didn't move, content to let her squeeze and sorta pull herself toward him.

It'd been two weeks since the fight with Beelzebub. Two weeks of quiet travel. They'd found a couple more rock arrows, each time at an intersection. No more need to rely on the mystical Noah and Azreal friendship.

If Yosepha were here, she'd ask if Mia was okay and pat her shoulder. Azreal and Kas were the most likely in this group to comfort her, and they didn't, because someone gave them the stoic's bible and they internalized it. Assholes. Nice, reliable assholes, but still assholes. At least Cerberus was kind. He held still, let her hug him, and he nuzzled two cheeks into hers, surrounding her head with his.

Mia forced down the tears bubbling, struggling to get out. Had the girl been nice? Innocent? Did she have a close connection to that wurm? Did she run for her life when the rider tracked her down? Sighing, Mia buried her face between Cerberus's necks, closed her eyes, and let out a few, quiet sobs.

No one said a thing, not even Julisa. That was as good as Mia could expect from this group, she supposed, to not be teased. If--

"Mia," Azreal said. He knelt in front of her, looking over Cerberus's back. "Are you... okay?"

She stared at him, blinked a few times, and laughed. Proven wrong in seconds. Good. Wrists to her eyes, she rubbed away a few tears that'd sneaked past her and stood up.

"I'm fine. I'm okay. Seeing someone die is hard. Seeing it through their own eyes like that? Yeah, it was rough."

She looked at the demons. Julisa looked annoyed, probably because Mia dared to show weakness. Kas was unreadable. Romakus wasn't paying much attention to her, and hadn't been since they'd gotten this close to False Gate. Vinicius looked at her like she was a puzzle to solve.

Azreal, with his purple amethyst eyes, tan skin, and messy black hair that almost reached his ears, watched her. She met his gaze as best she could, but there was something about the angel's eyes that made her pause. Demons never looked at her like that. No one had ever looked at her like that. What was he thinking? He looked solemn, maybe even depressed, but the steady intensity of his gaze hid it behind a wall.

"Let's go," Romakus said. "We're almost there."

Mia nodded, gestured to the wall, played a silent tune, and melted the stone back below the archangel flesh. In a single night, the stone walls had already become part flesh, merging with the archangel corpses sitting above. Spongy floor, bloody, and the ceiling dripped red, mostly along the walls. A couple of dead eyes had grown on the walls while the group slept, but they were half-closed and stared at nothing. They never moved.

Back in the tunnel of flesh, they followed the path James and the others had taken.

"The other archangels don't seem to notice me," Mia said. "I got the impression from what Dobasi said that Michael and Gabriel still had enough energy in them to maybe notice me." Raphael, or the corpse of Raphael, had dedicated the last bit of his energy to teaching her things. She'd put runes on the crew so they were immune to spire auras. And she could now visit Heaven or even the surface world, if she somehow found the energy to create the portal. That rune was absurdly heavy, though, and just thinking about it buried her with its mass, like trying to lift a car with her bare hands.

"Maybe they once did," Azreal said. "Maybe they dedicated what energy they had left to Dobasi's blood pool."

"Eh, I doubt it," Mia said. "He's a demon. Raphael couldn't even see you guys, remember? Not angels, not demons, no one but me. He was seeing -- hearing -- my music."

Azreal nodded. "Still, we know there is a piece of Michael and Gabriel left. They are dead, but that does not mean we cannot communicate with their corpses in some way. Perhaps..." The angel looked back, wings slumping slightly. "Perhaps there is something to be scavenged from them."

Mia smiled back at him. Maybe the big rapholem angel didn't realize it, but he was more relaxed around the group these days, still a wall of stoicism, but every so often he let a crack show. Each time, it warmed her.

"Maybe," she said. "Maybe Raphael, too? If he was dead, but needed energy to, uh, 'function', there could be a way to give him energy? I don't think we could revive him or his brothers. 'Brothers'." This time she used air quotes. "But maybe we could still power them up enough to talk? Maybe some day, we'll come back and see what we can do?"

Talk of the future. She needed that, needed to hear herself say that. There was a future beyond this journey. And with the rune that would let her reach Heaven, maybe that future could actually be amazing?

Azreal looked at her with something close to a smile. "Perhaps. The council angels have long given up on the archangels, but I suppose if change is to be had and new possibilities found, it would be through you."

She beamed.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~Day 114~~

Mia stared down at the corpses. "I... suppose this is a good sign?"

Romakus chuckled and squatted down over a body. "Definitely." Without ceremony or reverence, he picked up the corpse of a vrat demon, held him up by the head, and showed the body to the group. An X had been carved on his ripped-open chest. "Livian did this. Not the first time. Smart girl."

The hallway had grown wider and taller, with fewer and fewer eyes or blood on the walls. Now they walked on stone, and Mia's sixth sense told her the tunnel eventually opened up ahead. Her sixth sense couldn't sense demons, though, so everyone was surprised when the otherwise uneventful tunnel turned onto the remains of a slaughter. A couple dozen demons dead, including some heavy hitters like brutes and tigers, all cut open, broken apart, and some with hearts removed.

Not just demons, either. Souls. A hundred souls. Mutated, some with pure white flesh, some with pure black, some with sharp teeth, some with extra arms or more muscle on one side. Each with 666 carved in their foreheads.

"Beelzebub's servants," Julisa said, nudging a soul with her foot. "I wonder if the demons served him, too."

Romakus shook his head. "We didn't see any demons helping Beelzebub. If he had demons working for him, they'd have been in the battle."

Kas stood over a soul's corpse and sniffed it. "Then what happened here?"

No one had an answer.

"A truce, maybe?" Mia asked. "Demons working with Beelzebub's betrayers?" Everyone looked at her like she were crazy. "Or... James's group ran into the demons or the souls, they had a fight, and then the other group showed up." That got some confirming nods. When in doubt, assume hostile.

A little further down the tunnel, several spikes stuck out of the ground, and the walls, and even the ceiling. Blackstone. Not very big, many misshapen or uneven, but still good enough to puncture and kill several souls. James was getting better.

The tunnel continued on, and with each step, the blood dissipated. No more flesh walls or ceiling. No more bloodfalls running down the rocky surfaces. No more eyes. The ceiling turned white, and Mia's sixth sense couldn't sense it. The tunnel spread wider, and the white above turned into thousands of strange lines running through white, with hints of the burning sky sneaking through the cracks.

Feathers. The tunnel was no longer a tunnel, but flat ground that ran underneath a canopy of white feathers. Except each feather was half as long as a football field. As they walked along, some feathers dipped down onto the path, exposing slivers of the sky, and Mia ran her hands along the archangel feathers and sighed. She loved Cerberus, she really did, but his skin was tough and leathery. The long hairs in the feather, the stuff that made up the feather's width, were covered in absurdly soft fur. Chinchilla soft, each strand covered in a complex array of strands that were covered in hair, that were strands covered in even tinier hairs.

She looked back. Azreal was frowning at her.

"Sorry," she said. "It's just... It's really soft."

"It is the corpse of a long-dead archangel, Mia."

"I know! But..." Sighing, she stopped touching the colossal feather.

Julisa ripped off a piece of the feather, one of the main strands sticking off from the core. It was as long as Mia was tall, maybe ten centimeters thick, and thousands of little strands stuck out of it, each covered in the perfect fur. It was just rigid enough not to bend much when Julisa idly swung it, and she tossed it to Mia. Literally. The large stick of softness landed in Mia's arms, falling slower than an object of that size should fall.

"Light!" Mia said. "It's so light."

Azreal grumbled, earning a laugh from Julisa.

"Let the little girl enjoy soft things," the tetrad said. "I'm sure Heaven overflows with it, angel. But here in Hell, only the Scar provides softness."

Mia didn't question Julisa's sudden kindness. With a warm sigh, she rubbed her face on the tall, fuzzy stick, hugged it, and for just a moment, she was back in her bed, except it was ten years ago, she was a little girl, and she was loving the new toy her foster parents at the time had gotten her. A hilariously soft, giant stuffed animal, a caterpillar, as big as she'd been. Mia closed her eyes and breathed it in as the memory danced through her.

"Mia," Azreal said, and he patted her shoulder.

"Sorry! Sorry, I know, it's just--"

"You've been standing there for ten minutes."

She pulled her face away from the soft feather strand and stared up at the big angel. "What?"

"You've been... sighing happily, and humming to yourself, squeezing that piece of feather, for ten minutes."

She let the feather go. It fell onto the dry ground, and she stared down at it before nudging it with her sandal.

"You sure?"

"He is correct," Kas said. "You looked entranced."

"I didn't realize. I thought I'd just taken ten seconds to... enjoy it."

Everyone looked at her, raising eyebrows if they had them. Cerberus pressed up against her hip, pawed at the feather strand, lost interest, and ran ahead and tore open a nearby remnant. From the most perfect memory one moment, to listening to a remnant die the next, gargling on blood as Cerb tore out her throat. The number on her forehead went down from 321 to 320.

It wasn't Hannah.

"Agreed," Romakus said, gesturing to Cerb. "Let's move on. And be careful touching archangel corpses, Mia, if you're gonna fall asleep when you do."

She didn't respond. Walking past the feather strand, she glanced back at it, sharing a quick glance with Azreal. He shrugged with his wings.

The canopy of feathers parted, and the tunnel was no longer a tunnel, but a flat path between rising slopes of mountain rock. They'd come out at the vertical midpoint of the mountain. The path angled down, and everyone stopped as the world opened up before them.

False Gate. With no black fog or giant archangel corpses and mountains blocking her sight, the distant vortex was in full view, a colossal tornado of strange colors, glowing purple and harsh streaks of burning blue, while cracks of red lightning fell around it. Even from here, what had to be at least four hundred kilometers away, the vortex looked large.

Lucifer hadn't just torn himself a path up into Heaven. He'd ripped open a channel, creating a tornado as big as a small city.

The terrain of False Gate was a barren wasteland. That was the going theme for Hell, that every province was its own kind of special horror. Death's Grip had been all jagged mountains, and tunnels full of sharp things with lava below. The Black Valley had been a tainted swamp, with endless remnants, and giant bone structures. Angel's Spine had been a single, colossal mountain, far as anyone could tell, with an absurd network of tunnels within; the dead archangels on top were added later. And now False Gate, the Unholy Lands, awaited her.

Unholy was right. With Hell being perfectly flat, there was no horizon to stop her from seeing far out into the distance of the land. Romakus had said there'd been villages surrounding giant cathedrals, and he hadn't lied. Unfortunately, despite her apparent special powers, Mia did not have the eyes of an eagle. Things at a distance were blurry messes, and the nearest collection of what had to be haunted buildings, had a single cathedral in the center she couldn't make any details out of. But it was black, and so were the buildings around it.

There were black trees, sharp and tall, with no leaves. There were tiny glowing amber dots scattered around randomly; probably burning bushes. There were roads, or paths at least, lines that were slightly less dark than the dark dirt of False Gate. And there were ruins. Many ruins. Massive but destroyed buildings, toppled, huge slabs of stone standing against the wear of time. Except, this was Hell. Its provinces were horrifying on purpose. The ruins were probably grown by her, by Mother Hell.

"I mean, it looks kinda... like a haunted province?" Mia said. "Are there ghosts and shit?"

"The Grave Valley," Romakus said, "is sometimes called the haunted province. A place of cemeteries and mausoleums that love to trick souls into thinking they're being haunted, with scrying pools everywhere to make damned souls miss the world they've lost. That's not this place. In False Gate, you'll find..." He laughed and looked back over his shoulder at her. "Ever seen a priest break the joints of a pagan tied to a torture wheel?"

Mia sucked in a hard breath and covered her eyes. "No." But she'd read Berserk, at her brother's insistence. It'd had a scene like that.

"Imagine the worst religion, little soul. Imagine derivations and mirrors of it. Imagine the horrible things the surface world does to each other in the name of God or gods." Romakus pointed out toward the province and the distant buildings that blurred into millions of black trees. "Of all the provinces, no place reflects the surface world quite as much as False Gate."

"That's not a fair view of the surface world! That's..." Mia sighed and shook her head. No point in trying to convince a demon that the surface world wasn't all bad, when he grew up surrounded by nothing but the worst humanity had to offer.

Maybe that was why Romakus watched scrying pools so much?

Julisa grunted and began the descent. "Come on. I see movement below, and white wings."

"Wings!?" Mia scampered after the tetrad, and peeked down over the twisting, turning path between tall rocks. There was movement down there, two sets of angel wings, just barely poking up from the rocks.

Kas grabbed her shoulder and pulled her back, clicking once. She groaned, but nodded. Just because there were two angels didn't mean it was Yosepha and Noah.

It was Yosepha and Noah. The group approached, and the two angels stepped out from their hiding place.

"Too loud," Noah said. "We heard you coming."

Julisa and Romakus both chuckled and joined the two angels, but froze when a third body stepped out from around the rock.

"Adron!" Mia dashed forward and threw her arms around the vrat's waist. Cerberus followed her, rumbling and clicking quietly.

"Mia," the vrat said. Adron was a bit bigger than most vrats, eight feet tall, with really pretty long black tendril hair. He also had burn marks over half his body and face, permanently ruining and closing one eye. Vin's hellfire.

Adron didn't hold a grudge, far as Mia could tell. Demons were weird.

She smiled up at him and hugged him a little harder. Surely that'd be enough to prove to Cerberus he was trustworthy.

"So this is the hellhound," Adron said. "Noah told me, but I'm not sure I believed him." He squatted down in front of Cerb, and the cannam hellhound looked at him with all three heads. "You only gave it one name? Lazy."

Mia laughed. "But it's fitting! And he -- HE -- is one entity, I think." She squatted down too and patted the middle head. "This is boss head." She patted the left head. "This is dopey head." She patted the right. "This is serious head."

Adron laughed. It was a nice sound.

Grunts, moans, and annoyed groans had everyone turning and facing Romakus. He'd picked Yosepha up and was kissing her despite the demony, gnarly mouth and crazy teeth. More than kissing her, he was jamming his tongue into her mouth. A lot of tongue. A lot lot. Yosepha's throat bulged, and she pulled her head back and punched the demon in the chest.

"Romakus! Control yourself," she said.

Romakus did no such thing. He squeezed her, held her, kept her raised off the ground and trapped in his grip. And again, he pushed his tongue down her throat, literally. Yosepha didn't resist a second time.

It was so cute. And a little disturbing.

Demons and angels were, according to them, not capable of the same sort of romantic nuance humans were. They didn't have enough 'depth' to them. Mia wasn't so sure. They were definitely different from humans though, almost like instead of two jigsaw pieces struggling to fit together, they were like magnets, pulling or pushing. Romakus and Yosepha happened to pull into each other, and it was beautiful.

Noah stepped up, shared a quick smile with Mia, a brief nod, and joined his friend. The two men grabbed each other's forearms, a deep handshake. And then they said nothing. No talk of being happy to see each other again. No mention of their battles. Just a nod and a firm grip. Boys.

"What are you doing here?" Mia asked Adron.

"You didn't want to see me?"

"I did! I--"

Julisa chuckled. Mia shot a glare at the tetrad, and Julisa shut up with a smirk, taking a step back. Probably wanted Mia to say something about Hannah. Maybe she should. But not now.

"I did want to see you," Mia said. "But I thought you were guarding James?"

"James is fine, and unlike you, is good at avoiding trouble. We've had some run-ins with demons and souls--"

"We ran into them," Kas said, strolling up to his friend.

Adron winked. Or, blinked; one eye and all that. "You ran into some. But we've run into others and we managed to either avoid them or deal with them quietly. James has a gift for being quiet."

"And for seducing women," Yosepha said, finally free of Romakus. "Livian, Yulia, and Silvana are on that boy's lap every night."

Mia stared. "Yeah?"

"Yes. He's grown confident with his aura, and like you, Mia, is full of lust. Every night, he, Yulia's brute, and the incubi have sex with those three girls. Every night Noah and I had to give them space just to avoid his aura." She shivered and snuck a few glances at Romakus.

Romakus put up his hands. "Sounds like James is a jackass to me. Mia agreed no sex until we were back together, Yos. Well, 'agreed'. More like I forced her to keep a lid on her sex drive, so she wouldn't torture me with it while I waited for you."

The angel blinked up at the tetrad. "You waited for me?"

Romakus raised a brow. "You waited for me, didn't you?"

"Yes, I did. But I didn't..."

Mia suppressed a smile that would have brought out the sun. Yosepha was so beautiful, a black woman with a short afro, obsidian eyes, a bit of muscle on her lean build, and like Romakus said, a large, firm ass. An ass that he, at that very moment, was squeezing, despite the angel's futile squirming to escape. She wasn't squirming all that hard, either.

"Maybe James is still learning to suppress it," Mia said. "Or, I mean... If I was a guy, and I had three girls around me all the time who were more than willing to indulge my horniness, I can imagine--"

"If you were a guy?" Romakus asked. "You're hornier than any guy I've ever met."

Mia rolled her eyes. "Anyway. I'm glad to see you, Adron. Kas is, too."

Adron chuckled and poked his old friend in the shoulder with his tail. "Kas, miss me?"

Kas snorted and shrugged, earning another laugh from his friend.

"Why are you here?" Kas asked. "Where is James?"

"James," Noah said, "is out there." The angel hopped up onto a boulder with a flap of his wings and gestured out toward the River Styx. "Waiting for us to find the runes to cross the sea."

Everyone climbed up and did the same, finding various boulders on the mountainside. Behind the group were the corpses of the archangels, strewn across the mountain, but to their left in the distance was the middle of Hell, a giant red sea that circled a black storm in the center. The Forgotten Place. The Frozen Heart. From up here, the shoreline was visible, with millions of black trees running along beside it.

There were ruins near the shoreline, too, and they were gargantuan. Even from hundreds of kilometers away, the distant blurs had just enough definition that she saw titanic stones, as if someone had built castles for giants and then knocked them over.

"The woman in armor appeared," Noah said. "She--"

"Lilith," Vinicius said. He squatted low on his rock, staring out at the distant land. "Lilith, and Cain."

Noah sighed, turned, and sat on his rock, letting his legs dangle back over the path. "So they are Cain and Lilith?"

Noah, mikalim, looked a little older than Azreal, with long, dark blonde hair, face stubble, and silver eyes. He smiled more than Azreal, but that was like saying stone was softer than steel.

"They are," Mia said, hopping back down onto the path, Cerberus right beside her.

She caught everyone up on what happened after she stirred the hornet's nest at the Angel's Spine spire. The attack of the alien invader. Beelzebub rescuing them, only to try and eat Mia. The rider rescuing them, only to try and kill Mia. Lilith rescuing them, and dueling her husband.

Adron stared. "I missed a lot."

"Apparently," Noah said. "So the rider really is Cain. He disappeared after Cain's War. Most angels assumed he died."

"He did not," Vinicius said, heavy voice rumbling and nearly vibrating the ground. "He and his wife somehow reached the Forgotten Place, and changed."

With a heavy breath, Noah nodded, his wings falling slightly. "We follow in their footsteps."

"What'd Lilith tell you?" Mia asked.

"That the runes to cross the sea are lost. She looked for them, and they have been taken."

"Taken." Because of course they'd been taken. She facepalmed and looked at her crew. "Told ya it wouldn't be easy."

Romakus rolled his eyes. "And these 'runes', we have any idea what we're looking for?"

"Lilith said little," Yosepha said. "She appeared and left within moments, afraid of drawing the rider to James. Though from what James said, another unmarked has died to the rider." Mia winced, and Yosepha moved on. "She said the runes used to be written onto colossal stones inside a great ruin along the shore, halfway along False Gate. But that the stones were recently removed. Very recently."

"Colossal stones?" Julisa asked. "Removed?"

The angel nodded. "That is what she said. Several massive stones, dragged from the ruin to somewhere else."

They all knew the only place someone would drag special, giant stones to. To the center of the province, to the spire, or maybe the great forge near it.

"Wait," Mia said. "How did Cain or Lilith ever activate those runes in the first place? Far as I know, only we unmarked can read the ancient language. Us, the Old Ones, and archangels." Oh shit. "Did they... make a deal with an Old One?"

The angels shrugged.

"It is knowledge beyond us," Noah said. "The council may know, but..."

They weren't going to get answers from the council, and unless Lilith showed up again, they weren't going to get answers from her either.

"James," Yosepha said, "will head to those ruins on the shoreline with the others. There may be something he can do there, and it is safer near the shoreline as long as they do not touch the water. Perhaps he will find a way to activate the runes without the physical ones."

"Maybe," Mia said. "And--oh, that's why you three are here. You're... gonna help us head into False Gate and find the originals. If I can find them and touch them, they'll activate in my mind." She tapped her temple. "And then I can use them. Probably. Maybe."

Noah nodded. "Yes. We must push our way into False Gate, and probably to the spire, or perhaps the forge, or even the vortex. We do not know. We will have to capture the insane demons of this province and interrogate them. And we have spotted battalions of angels above, another reason we leave James, for fear our wings will be spotted." With a slow, heavy breath, Noah looked up and stared into the churning embers of the burning sky. "There are angels up there, searching. More than any other province, there will be angels here. They know False Gate is important. They hunt us."

Mia gulped and stared up, too. Where the crew was now, they blended in with the nearby chaos of the mountain-sized dead archangels behind them and their giant feathers. Any angels flying above, hiding in the swirling flames of the flame clouds, would only see white dots near a mountain of white.

"The angels are a liability," Vinicius said.

Kas grunted up at the child of the Old Ones. "They are our strongest warriors, save for you, ragarin."

Vin mirrored the grunt but didn't argue.

"It is a problem, though," Mia said. "We need to do something about those wings. But we're not in the Black Valley. Can't use the Walking Dead disguise again." Thankfully, she didn't have to explain that joke a second time. "We need a way to cover up your wings."

Noah looked back at his wings and sighed. "We could remove them."

"Yes," Azreal said. "They will regrow with time, as Yosepha knows. And we can still fight without them. We--"

Mia threw up her hands. "You two are fucking ridiculous. No, you're not cutting off your wings, just so we can decrease the chance of angels spotting us. We're going to find a normal way to cover them up." She turned to Romakus. "We have to get some clothes for the angels. Do any demons here wear silk? Or maybe leather cloaks? Anything black or red?"

Romakus shook his head. "This is False Gate. The demons are insane, now, and don't farm hellbeasts for leather or silk. What they wear is the armor left over from the Spires War." The tetrad gestured down at Mia. "Can't you fashion some clothes for them with your potram rune? It makes you red."

"I wish. The rune does its thing, and I can't change how it functions. It just... is. It clothes me, cleans me, pretties me up, and that's all." She gestured at her red silks, the black sandals, and the pretty black jewelry on her wrists, neck, and fingers. She even had a navel piercing, some earrings, and a tiny black belly chain dangling around her hips. Absolute, utterly, one hundred percent, sex clothes.

She had a tattoo on her back, too, but far as she knew from the others, it was just decorative, showing off her spine.

"We could use blood," Julisa said, grinning. "Perhaps we should rub the blood of fresh kills on the angels? They would not warrant attention if they were red like demons."

Yosepha glared at the much taller woman, but didn't say no either.

"Blood fades too fast," Romakus said. "Sometimes in hours. And we don't have a limitless supply like in the Black Valley."

"Dirt?" Adron asked and gestured down at the ground. "Rub it into your clothes and wings?"

Noah scooped up some dirt. It was a mix of black and red grains, and he rubbed it against a wing. It fell off the brilliant white feathers, leaving barely a crumb.

"We need actual fabric," Mia said, and she pointed at Adron's breastplate. "Let's just stay as hidden as possible and see if we can find some kind of fabric. There's no silk or leather in False Gate, I get that, but you're sure there's absolutely nothing the angels can wear, Romakus? Anything that'll cover up some of this white?"

Romakus looked down, tapped his horn, and grinned. "There is something."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The first cathedral sealed in the image of what this province was going to be like.

It was a mockery.

"This can't be right," Mia said, following Romakus and Vinicius through the archway and past the giant wooden doors. "Cathedrals like this weren't even around two thousand years ago. This is too new, and... on the nose."

"There's other buildings," Romakus said, chuckling as he gestured at the scene before them, "other places in False Gate that mock other religions. Temples. Shrines. And I bet you can guess the sort of remnants that grow here."

It was a classic cathedral, something made with obvious Catholic influence. Except everything was awful. The massive stained glass windows showed depictions of demons cutting down angels and feasting on their hearts. The high ceiling was covered in dangling chains, many ending with a large hook that held a wriggling remnant like a skewered worm. Other chains ended in large, circular cages, wide enough for one remnant, but two or three were crammed into each, and the bars were serrated. Blood dripped from the remnants above, endlessly painting the otherwise black cathedral floor in crimson. The pews were metal, and instead of cushions, they had spiked bottoms. Remnants sat on them, shackles binding their wrists and ankles, forcing them to sit on the sharp barbs. Each twist and turn of their bodies drove the metal into their legs.

Mia shivered as she walked down the aisle, staring at the remnants shrieking in pain. 'Save me. Kill me. Free me. Help me, please'. They begged for mercy, and their eyes, almost mindless, glared at Mia like a raving lunatic's. They foamed at the mouth, twisted in their shackles, shredded their bodies even more, and the chains rattled. Each remnant was emaciated, skin and bones, and each wore a number on their forehead. 452. 520. 605. Large numbers.

Mia covered her ears. She didn't need Romakus to point it out. If Hell targeted the damned with specific tortures, people who used religion as a disguise, a cover, who hid their vileness behind it like a veil, were here.

Cerberus walked behind her, six eyes looking in three directions and at all the remnants, licking his fangs. He didn't pity the remnants. The demons didn't either, ignoring them as they walked the aisle with her.

The angels pitied them. Mia looked back at the three angels, and each of them did their best to not look at the remnants that surrounded them. They cringed with each step, glancing at the windows or the ceiling above, and even Azreal and Noah shuddered, clenching their fists at their sides while Yosepha rubbed her arms.

"Unholy," Yosepha said.

Azreal nodded. "Unholy Lands."

Romakus shrugged. "I prefer False Gate." Without a glance, he swung his claws out and decapitated a remnant, a man who'd stuck his head out and tried to bite his leg as he walked by.

There was a stage at the end of the aisle, and a pulpit. A nasty thing, covered in spikes and decorated with embossed black skulls. And behind it, along the stage, stood six crosses.

"What is this?" Mia asked. She didn't step up onto the short stage, eyes locked on the eyes of the remnants hanging from their torture devices. Crosses. Each remnant was crucified, a nail in each wrist and through their ankles, pinning them to the dark wooden beams.

They wouldn't die quickly. Most remnants died in a day or a week, far as Mia could tell, their torture often sawing them into bits, burning them into ash, or draining them of all their blood. But the six people -- two women and four men -- weren't being tortured, beyond being crucified. And if a soul, even a remnant, wasn't actively being injured, they took a long time to die. Whoever these six were, they weren't dying for a while.

650. 623. 611. 647. 604. 662.

Sometimes remnants wore clothes, brown rags that disintegrated when the remnant died. The remnants on the crosses wore red, dirty robes that were far too familiar.

"I'm sure there are lovely, religious people in the world," Romakus said, almost cackling as he stepped up onto the stage. "I'm sure--"

Yosepha snorted. "There are many! Heaven shares its joys with countless who have devoted their lives to their religions. Heaven overflows with the devout who are pure of heart."

Romakus was in asshole mode today. He gestured at the six priests and laughed.

"And Hell overflows with the devout, who said they were pure of heart."

That conversation was an eighteen-car pile-up waiting to happen. Mia put up her hands and stepped between them.

"We can talk about who deserves to be in Hell or Heaven later," she said. "Romakus, why are we here?"

"Isn't it obvious?" He stood beside a cross, and the top of it barely passed his horns, putting him at eye level with the crucified remnant. "Hell has a wicked sense of justice, doesn't she?" And with an evil grin that made Mia and Yosepha take a step back, Romakus gently tugged on the hem of the remnant's gross, torn, dirty red robes.

Was he being such an asshole because of what Mia had asked him about two weeks ago? About being a bailiff in False Gate?

"Remnant clothes?" Noah asked. "The clothes of remnants fade quickly when removed."

Romakus's grin balanced on a knife's edge between utterly evil and chronically depressed. The fuck was going on in that man's head?

"These will fade, too," he said. "But they'll last a lot longer. Days. And when they're gone, we simply enter a new cathedral and do the same. Or a temple. A mosque? How about a pagoda?"

Bitter. The demon was bitter. About the Unholy Lands and this mockery of surface religions? No. Romakus didn't care about that. Something else was getting under his skin, and Yosepha saw it. The angel looked at the man and watched him for a time, with only the choir of dying remnants filling the silence.

Yosepha stepped onto the stage with her boyfriend and gestured up at the remnant priest.

"So we strip the clothes off the damned, clothes of... religious hypocrites, and wear them?"

Romakus nodded and aimed his gaze down at his girlfriend. Mia watched close. For a long moment, the two looked at each other, until Romakus's gaze faltered, his smile disappeared, and he looked away.

Julisa hopped up onto the stage and stripped a remnant of his clothes with all the reverence of someone peeling an orange. She tossed the clothes back, Adron caught them, and he handed them to Noah and Azreal. Cerberus got a sniff, too.

Gaze locked on the garbs in his arms, Noah squeezed the fabric hard, silver eyes almost burning holes through them.

"Romakus," he said. "I--"

Romakus snapped his head toward the angel. "I don't have a better idea. If you have one, I'm all ears. Maybe we kill some demons and you try and drape their armor over your wings. Think that'd work?"

Noah looked over his shoulder at a wing. Meera metal armor was just slabs of black metal banged and bent into shape, practically junkyard metal, and held in place by leather straps tied tight around limbs. Putting it on the wings simply wouldn't work.

Sighing, Noah slipped the garb over a wing, and Azreal tied the fabric in place, wrapping the wing snug and compressing it lightly. Noah did the same for Azreal, and they repeated it for Yosepha.

"Sorry," Mia said. "This sucks."

"Yes, it does," Yosepha said, glaring at the brown and red flaps of fabric that now dangled over her wings, and from her shoulders over her body. They didn't fit her, but that didn't matter. Most of her white stuff was covered. From a couple of kilometers in the sky, no one would see her as anything other than a blur in the terrain, or maybe a wandering soul who'd found something to wear.

Mia winced. "Worse than the guts from the Black Valley?"

"Yes," Azreal said. "Much worse."

Mia braced for Romakus's inevitable chuckle, but it never came. Julisa chuckled, sure, but only her, and she kept it quiet, voice disappearing under the constant wail of remnants.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The angels walked in back, wings slumped in their wraps, shoulders slumped under what had to be the greatest insult they'd ever received. Mia wanted to talk to them, especially Noah, since it'd been a couple of weeks since she last saw him. But it'd been much longer since she last saw Adron, and she wanted to catch up.

"Hey," she said, walking beside the tall man. Angels were much stronger than vrats, but Adron had a foot of height on them. Surrounded by giant demons like Romakus and Vin, sometimes it was easy to forget Adron was huge, too.

"Hey," Adron said, grinning down at her.

They walked along the contours of a village, hiding in the black trees. Mia reached out with her music and played gentle tunes, nudging the trees aside. Difficult, considering how brittle and hard the trees were. Plenty of remnants were trapped in the trees, bodies ripped apart by the sharp branches. Probably another reason the angels walked in the back of the group: the best way to avoid getting their wings stabbed.

"How you doing?" she asked.

He raised the brow of his good eye. "What do you mean?"

"How are doing, Adron?" She poked his hip, under his half-breastplate. "You were traveling without me. I want to know if it went well."

He laughed, a warm sound, almost playful. It was the sort of laugh he made often, back before.

"Things were actually pretty quiet. A few run-ins with demons, and some nasty hellbeasts. But James has been learning quick, figured out how to grow forbidden trees and fruit, and fight when he needs to. Plus, Faustinus and the other incubi are really good at sneaking. Even Yulia's unnamed brute friend keeps his temper under control. We avoided fighting, usually."

"Good! When Dobasi showed me his blood pool, it showed you guys about to get swarmed by Beelzebub's betrayers, I... I was really worried you wouldn't be able to handle it. You telling me I didn't need to cause all the problems I did?"

Adron tapped his chin and idly slid his finger down some of the burn scars on his face. Burn scars on humans were nasty. But on Adron, and maybe other demons too, the burns had healed and scarred into interesting swirling lines, almost like tattoos, except embossed. Maybe because demons struggled to get scars, like how the ones in the Black Valley had to cut their skin over and over to make them scar.

"We probably needed your help," he said. "There were a lot of betrayers, and many of them were huge and mutated. If Noah and Yosepha hadn't shown up, we might not have survived."

Mia sighed with relief. Whether Adron was lying to her so she wouldn't feel bad about all the deaths and carnage she'd caused, she couldn't tell. But it was nice to hear, regardless.

"I hear James has a large sex drive," Mia said. "Good to know it's not just me."

"Still nothing compared to you."

"Hey!"

"But, yeah, there's been a lot of sex."

She nudged Adron's side. "You too, right?"

"Not at first. But after a while, I relaxed at Yulia's insistence. We were getting along, so I joined."

"Good! Must have been a good time for the girls, with so many guys." The other group had had an interesting setup.

She almost walked into Vin's tail. Everyone had stopped. She peeked around the giant demon at the black and red forest ahead.

Not a forest. More crosses. A thousand--ten thousand crosses jutted from the ground on their path, each holding a crucified remnant, each cross covered in tiny spikes like barbed wire. The naked remnants wailed and screamed at the sight of Mia and the group. It was beyond loud, and the forest of crosses and the damned had to be many kilometers wide. There was no getting around it if they wanted to push to the False Gate spire. They had to go through it.

Shit.